Just another day (again and again)
by Sunshine-M
Summary: Carol wakes up to a Groundhog day scenario. Season 5 mixed xith pre-TWD. Carol/Daryl fic. Disclaimer: I own nothing. Trigger warning for abuse. Please Read and review


Carol wakes up one morning, and she knows something is wrong, so wrong. There's someone in bed with her, and that's not the most surprising part: she's sleeping in a bed. Not bunk beds, not something smaller. A real bed.

She turns around and spots Ed. So many emotions run through her, she can't sort them out. Where are the people she has come to live with? When she went to bed, she had been at the Safe Zone.

She doesn't think things through, just lie back in bed, and hope that when she'll open her eyes, she'll be back at the zone.

She gets woken up, if it can be said so, by Ed who pushes her out of bed, grabs her hair and starts yelling something about his breakfast. She tries to push him off, but for some reason, she finds that she is not capable of doing it. She takes a couple of more blows, and she manages at one point to kick him so hard in the shin that his bone almost break.

That's the moment she realizes she's not in a dream, and something terrible is going on. She wipes the blood of her mouth, and thinks:

"Sophia!"

If she's back to before it all began, then her daughter is still alive. She manages to get up, but she neglected to watch Ed, thinking he was down for the count.

She hears the sound of the cupboard of the table night open, and she only remembers then what he keeps there.

"You silly bitch," he says.

And he shoots her in the face.

She wakes up with a start, and she's back in her marital bed, and she can't believe Ed actually shot her. The jerk actually killed her. Except she's alive. She rubs a hand on her forehead, and there is no trace of the bullet that just killed her.

She gets up, silently, and grabs the journal on the front door. Her previous self would never have done that, but she needs to know. The date tells her that it is six months before the disease spread.

She gets the paper back in, and goes into her daughter's bedroom. She weeps, watching the even breathing of her baby who is not such a baby anymore, but she's alive... Sophia is alive!

Her baby is woken up brutally when Ed starts yelling about his breakfast not waiting for him on the table. He slaps Carol, and the peace that her daughter exhibited ten seconds ago is gone. Carol suffers through the beating, because Sophia is alive. She then goes to the kitchen, limping, and she fixes Ed breakfast. She wants to kill, to make him pay, but she can sense something is different.

He finally leaves for work, and she doesn't take Sophia to school, wanting to spend the day with her. They have fun, though Sophia is always afraid of what her father will do when he hears she didn't go to school.

As she watches herself in the mirror, something dawns on Carol: the reason she can't fight Ed off, it's because she had not gotten as strong as she is now, or as she will be, at the zone. She is still the woman he can beat into a bloody pulp twenty times a day.

She wonders why she's here, and what tomorrow will bring. When Ed comes home, the principal told him about his daughter skipping school, and Carol has to go through another beating. She longs for her strength back. She blacks out at some point under her husband's blows.

She wakes up, next to Ed, and talking about deja-vu is so unnecessary. It's the same day, she sees on the paper she gets. What does it mean? Where are Rick, Lori, and Carl? Where is Daryl? Oh Hell, where is Daryl? Is she the only one going through this? Is it something in the water? Or maybe she doesn't remember getting hit in the future, and she's concussed, going through delirium.

She fixes Ed breakfast, so that's one less beating. It pains her but she gets Sophia to school, in order to try to use this day to understand where she is.

She's alone, and there is laundry to be done, but she doesn't do it. She'll wake up to that same pile of laundry anyway, and Ed has some clothes in advance, since it's mostly her stuffs and Sophia's in the laundry room.

She spends the day trying to find clues, to understand what got her there, and what it means. Is it a second chance? Though what kind of crapastic second chance involves being back in Ed's bed? If it's someone's deed which got her there, then that person can't have wanted to help her. She could have woken up the week that followed, when Ed was on a binge at the local strip-club and he had spent almost a week spending money they needed.

When he gets back at home, Sophia is doing her homework, and Carol doesn't know what's next.

A beating is what's next, of course. Apparently, she should have done the laundry anyway, because there are his favorite socks at the bottom of the pile, and why on earth does he need lucky socks? He knocks her out, once again, and the last thing she sees is the fear in her baby's eyes. Fuck Ed.

She wakes up, and this time, she doesn't waste any time. She grabs her pillow and smothers Ed with it. He fights back but she feels the life leave his body. It brings her joy, so much joy. She chuckles when she takes off the pillow and he is dead.

She wakes up again, and doesn't understand why she's back so soon. She never had the whole day, Ed free too. She smothers him with her pillow again. The satisfaction is there and the feeling of revenge is good.

She wakes up again, and has to come to terms with the fact that apparently, killing Ed is a big no-no and means she has to start that day again.

She gets up, against her instincts, and fixes Ed's breakfast. She just needs to get him away for the day, to think. She misses her friends, and she wonders if they're stuck somewhere like she is.

She gets an answer soon, after she hangs out at the mall and she sees Andrea and her sister. They both walk by her, but they don't recognize her.

It breaks her spirit, but then she goes fetch Sophia from school, and she feels slightly better.

The following day, she goes to the mall again, and stops Andrea, asking her for the time. Andrea looks at her like she knows her and can't place where she knows her from.

There are a bunch of days when Carol experiment with killing Ed. She poison his food, she poisons his whisky. She smothers him with a pillow when he goes to sleep. Then she realizes that though when she does it, having waited all day, having taken advantage of her daughter's presence, killing Ed doesn't soothe the ache in her heart.

She's missing her family.

A bunch of mornings later, she sees Noah in town. He doesn't know her either.

What the fuck is going on?

The following days and weeks, she learns nothing new.

She uses her car and travels in town, and meets again with many from her clan. The Greenes are too far away, but she orders pizza which Glenn delivers in a coffee in Atlanta, a weird action, but since she lives outside of his delivery zone.

She sees Rick. She sees Lori. She almost had a heart attack when she meets with Shane.

She meets them all, even a pre-apocalypse Michonne, and she almost cries when she see the toddler in her arms. She had always known that Michonne had lost a child, but to see her, so happy, so un-samurai like, it's heart-breaking.

She tries to train to gain strength again but nothing happens, even though several weeks passes by, with her waking up each morning near to fucking unkillable Ed.

She wakes up, and prays that wherever he is Daryl is doing okay. She knows he will survive to go through the Zombie Apocalypse, but she also knows he hated his life.

With her thoughts focused on him, she feels something. She would swear she experiences a vision, where she sees Daryl, and she would swear again that he sees her too. He says her name.

That seal the deal. Just because he's about to wake up and will beat her for not having his breakfast ready, Carol grabs the gun in Ed's night table and kills him.

Then, it's the day. The D-Day. The fucking day. She fixes Ed breakfast, fighting the urge to put some rat poison in his coffee, and he goes away. She grabs Sophia, and they get on the road, her daughter not understanding what's going on, but Carol is ready. Oh Lord, how she misses her daughter, and it is such a blessing to have her again, but this is not real. She knows. She's only making herself suffer some more by spending time with her.

They drive, into the sort of bayou where she thinks Daryl lives. It's Merle she encounters, and he starts coming onto her, but she's not impressed. She asks to see Daryl.

Merle refuses to tell her where he is.

She punches him, shocking the hell out of Sophia and Merle both.

That's when Daryl arrives, and he looks like the boy she first met, and she doesn't know if she's ready for this to be over, though she's just as afraid he won't recognize her.

Their eyes meet, and he says her name.

She wakes up, and she's back at the zone. She can hear Eugene snoring a couple of rooms away from her.

She jumps out of bed, and doesn't know where to look, but he barges in the living room, where Abraham and Rosita are having breakfast.

Their eyes meet again, and she knows he lived it too. She all but jumps on him, and he kisses her.

"Do you mind? Some of us are trying to eat," Abraham groans.

Rosita punches him in the arm.

When Carol wakes up, Daryl is next to her. The curse is broken. He kisses her, and she helps him out of his pants. They're alive. They're together. And it's all that matters.


End file.
